Katie Kuehner-Hebert

Eventually banking companies will be able to ease off on reserving and send more of their revenue to the bottom line. However, the challenge facing bankers in the second half of 2009 and early 2010 will be pinpointing the right time, balancing the expectations of investors and regulators.

Bank stocks and the broader markets rose Thursday on better-than-expected unemployment data. The KBW Bank Index rose 3.41%, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.92% and the Standard & Poor's 500 rose 1.19%.

The KBW Bank Index rose 0.39% on mixed economic news. The Commerce Department said that June durable goods orders shrank 2.5% from the previous month.

The KBW Bank Index spent most of the day in negative territory because of a weak report on consumer confidence but rose up to 0.1% in the last hour of trading.

Improved margins are helping many banking companies offset loan losses, offering a clear path to profits if lenders can clean up their loan books.

The KBW Bank Index rose 3.11% Monday as investors grew more confident about the sector.

The KBW Bank Index struggled to enter positive territory Friday, but ended unchanged from Thursday's close of 37.32. The index ended the week up 0.64%.

Bank stocks and the broader markets rose on encouraging economic news.The KBW Bank Index rose 2.95%, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 2.12% and the Standard & Poor's 500 rose 2.33%.

Second-quarter results released Thursday brought into sharp relief the differences between the two companies — particularly the progress each has made on dealing with its credit problems.

Wells Fargo & Co. did a lot of things a public company is supposed to do at earnings time — report a flashy profit gain and appear to exceed an ambitious capital plan, to name two — but it just wasn't enough to silence the alarm bells from a larger-than-expected deterioration in credit quality.

After faltering in morning trading, bank stocks rebounded Wednesday as investors got a better grasp of 2Q results from a number of banking companies.

Numbers from Regionals Add Up to Down Day

Wells Fargo & Co. has sparred — sometimes in public — with the government over bailout issues, but to achieve the company's goals, it might want to make nice.

Citigroup Imposes Cutoff for IOUs

Bank stocks fell Friday on mixed earnings results.

BB&T CEO Kelly King has had two priorities as the economy worsened: repaying all of the company's federal aid and restoring its dividend to prerecession levels.